Much of the debate surrounding police behavior in the United States has revolved around fatal confrontations between unarmed black men and law enforcement, but a new movement wants to remind Americans that black women are also victims.

In order to do so,
a
new report was released Wednesday called ‘Say Her Name:
Resisting Police Brutality Against Black Women,' which documents
cases in which black women have been killed, beaten or sexually
assaulted by law enforcement. The report was authored by the
African American Policy Forum (AAPF), the Center for
Intersectionality and Social Policy Studies at Columbia
University, and Andrea Ritchie, a Soros Justice Fellow and expert
on women’s experiences with police.

“Although Black women are routinely killed, raped and beaten
by the police, their experiences are rarely foregrounded in
popular understandings of police brutality,” said Kimberle
Williams Crenshaw, Director of the African American Policy Forum
and co-author of the report, in a statement. “Yet, inclusion
of Black women’s experiences in social movements, media
narratives and policy demands around policing and police
brutality is critical to effectively combating racialized state
violence for Black communities and other communities of
color.”

The group is using the hashtag #SayHerName to get its message out
on social media.

On Wednesday, a vigil was held at New York City’s Union Square,
where dozens of people rallied, and relatives of women victimized
by police brutality spoke about their experiences.

Meanwhile, a National Day of Action is planned for Thursday in
numerous cities, including New York, Chicago, Detroit, Miami, and
Seattle, organized by the Black Youth Project 100.

“All #BlackLivesMatter, and that means we uplift and fight
for lasting justice for the families of victims of police
violence,” the group stated on its
website. “We’ve joined Ferguson Action and Black Lives
Matter to put out a national call for actions to end state
violence against All Black Women and Girls.”

Several black women have already been lost to police, according
to the AAPF. In April, Alexia Christian of Atlanta was shot and
killed by police inside of a patrol car. Authorities said she
stole a truck and managed to free one of her hands from handcuffs
before shooting at the officers inside the car, but relatives and
activists question the story.

Another incident mentioned in the report concerns an Oxnard,
California woman who was shot in March after local police
responded to calls regarding a domestic dispute. A mother of
three, 26-year-old Meagan Hockaday reportedly ran at responding
officers with a knife before being shot. An investigation into
the incident has been announced.

“Black women are all too often unseen in the national
conversation about racial profiling, police brutality, and lethal
force,” said Andrea Ritchie, who co-authored the report.
“This report begins to shine a light on the ways that Black
women are policed in ways that are similar to other members of
our communities - whether it’s police killings, ‘stop and frisk,’
‘broken windows policing,’ or the ‘war on drugs.’”

“It also pushes open the frame to include other forms and
contexts of police violence - such as sexual assault by police,
police abuse of pregnant women, profiling and abusive treatment
of lesbian, bisexual, transgender and gender nonconforming Black
women, and police brutality in the context of responses to
violence - which bring Black women’s experiences into even
sharper focus.”